


Sonnet Zero

by morituritesalutant



Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Asexual Relationship, F/F, Miscarriage/Loss of a child (only hinted to), Poetry, Porthos-centric, Religion, Rule 63
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-21
Updated: 2015-05-21
Packaged: 2018-03-31 14:05:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3980872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morituritesalutant/pseuds/morituritesalutant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a summer that never ends Aramis is offered a second chance at life by two sisters, pastis is the drink of their choice and reconciliation is the name of the song in their hearts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sonnet Zero

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jewel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jewel/gifts).



> For Marta; for there's no such thing as coincidence ;)

There’s someone asleep behind the small stone wall. It’s the border that divides the backyard from the the lavender fields, even though it has fallen apart almost entirely. Samara knows this because they’ve lived here all their lives. The wall was there before her birth and will be there long after she has died.

The long-haired woman was already asleep under the large linden when Samara first saw her and so she let her be. (After some internal panic because she thought she had found a dead body, _again._ ) 

It’s become a solitarily ritual not to disturb her whenever Samara passes, but _oh the temptation_ , the temptation is there.  
She writes a poem about her instead.  _I am the puppet of my talent_ , she thinks gleefully as she choses her words carefully.

She watches Porthos who is asleep on the other side of the wall, a little further of course and not in the same position. It would have been truly beautiful if they had shared a bed on the hard ground with only a few stones separating them. But alas, life is not very romantic by nature, no matter how much Samara wishes it was.

Porthos is sitting in the wooden chair near the  back door, the breeze billows the sheer curtains as it sweeps into the house and back into the garden.  
There’s a glass of wine close to being finished on the table next to her and a book on her knee.   
The short hair looks good on Porthos. It falls in soft curls over her forehead as her head is bowed.

“Aramis will like it,” Samara had said while cutting it slowly, the tip of her tongue in the corner of her mouth betraying the concentration she dedicated to her role of hairdresser.  She had read somewhere that cutting  off long hair means ‘transition’ and Samara liked symbolism, especially when she could apply it to others.

“Who’s Aramis?” Porthos had asked in return, trying to move as little as possible.

“The woman behind the wall. She smells of the lavender she sleeps in, but her eyes are the colour an Echinacea’s heart.”   
 “I think,” Samara added after a moment.

“Pretty sure they’re just regular brown, Samara.”

“Brown eyes are never regular. And how would you know anyway?”

“Because I’ve spoken to her, in the evenings. I sometimes hear her sing.”

“What does she sing?”

“Lullabies, I think for a baby.”

“But she’s alone.”

“I know."  
  
That’s how Samara remembers the conversation and thus that is the way it must have gone.  
  
The sky has changed to the same colour as the fields behind Samara. She hates the awful smell of sage, lavender and  maquis together, it’s sweet and resinous at the same time. _Disgusting_.  
She passes Porthos to escape the heat and strong summer odors and disappears into the cold clusters of the house.

  
\--

 _Samara was right. Aramis is very beautiful,_ Porthos thinks. She has brown eyes framed with dark lashes. She has a mouth full of promises.  
  
Aramis leans over the dividing wall and asks Porthos the names of the flowers  on the backyard-side. Porthos tells her their titles in French as well as Latin and Aramis compliments her on her knowledge. Her mouth is even more beautiful when it smiles.

“You should come inside,” Porthos says, too late realizing what that normally insinuates. She had wanted to ask Aramis for days now, offer her a bed instead of the ground she had chosen to sleep on.  
  
Aramis answers in a hushed whisper, “let’s drink some _pastis_ first.”

Porthos goes back inside to get a bottle of water and Ricard and has to go in for a second time to get the glasses.  
They drink slowly and Porthos paints Aramis’ nails red, first her feet, then her hands. It feels strangely intimate for some reason.   
  
They talk about history, but avoid politics. Aramis doesn’t sing this time, but she does smile a lot. Porthos can't stop looking at her pre-raphaelite face with the wavy hair, can't stop listening to the raspy voice of a languedoc folk singer.  
  
"I'm happy you fell asleep behind our wall," she says and Aramis looks at her curiously, one eyebrow down and one up and the dimples of her smile multiply.  
  
"The neighbours are not as nice as us you know, you are actually more lucky than we were," Porthos adds.

"Keep digging yourself in deeper," Aramis reacts, with a smugness that seems to belong on her face but had faded away.   
Porthos tilts her head in pretend offense, "admit it," she challenges in return.

\--  
  
The windows are open, an attempt to let cold air in but the curtains hang still, even the wind sleeps at night. It’s warm and the bed is stripped.

They lay side by side, hand in hand. They don’t say anything, but look up to the Madonna painting on the ceiling.  
“She has stars in her eyes,” Aramis observes, the quiet moment gone. “She cares about us,” she adds with certainty, the sound of her voice full of love, as though she knows Maria personally.   
She probably does, for later she comments quietly “all mothers know her, but especially those who lost their children understand her well.”

“She looks happy,” Porthos says pensively. 

“She does, doesn't she?” Aramis responds, for the first time her voice has a different tone. Not that slow deep breathy sound that a summer of not speaking produced, but much higher, like a ringing bell.  
_Surprise_ , Porthos realizes, that’s what it is.  
  
Porthos prefers the Madonna's that look like peasants or seamstresses instead of the depictions that show Maria as pure and holy alone, tears painted on their faces. This Maria has dark skin. She looks like Samara, because it’s a portrait of their mother. She isn't sure who told her that, the painting was there before her birth and will be there long after she has died.

Porthos closes her eyes, she feels a bright calmness flow  inside her, Aramis doesn’t touch her, Porthos doesn’t want her to, not ever, and it seems Aramis feels the same way.

_Love isn’t really dramatic at all,_  Porthos says to herself _._  She can’t imagine what all those famous writers and poets, including her own Samara, always talk about. _Love turns out to be quite simple._

It arrives in the night in disguise of a vagabond with a broken heart. It is found in the aftertaste of anise and the song of a nightingale telling them it’s 2 AM.

\--

Every evening they walk to the village. It’s not far away and father's old dog follows Aramis and Porthos. It walks in a pace much slower than them.  
Aramis calls him “Coquette” even though the small terrier is male. The dust of the unpaved road  clouds behind them as they pass by the threes, climb over the hill and take a left at the crosspoint.

Porthos starts to understand why Aramis sleeps during the day . The evenings are much cooler, only a pleasant warmth forces them to recall the memory of a hot day and there’s not need for jackets or coats. The different temperature makes Porthos able to move with much more liberty than normally as the heavy air doesn't hold her down and close to the ground.  


The night starts quiet but it never lasts long. Along with Aramis, other creatures of the summer wake up and start to move, relieved from the heat and the light their day begins at last. It seems the world is turned around and Porthos was never able to see it before. Probably in more than one way.

There’s always the same men sitting outside the café on the corner, drinking and chatting and the women are greeted with a choir of  _bonsoir_.   
There’s a young girl who sits on her porch with a cat by her side, Coquette ignores the animal on purpose. The girl smiles to them, but her eyes betray it’s not meant to indicate she recognizes them; it’s nothing more than simple politeness.  
  
Aramis places her hand in Porthos‘ neck and softly brushes the sweaty strings of hair to the side.  
  
They walk all the way to the centre and there they separate. Aramis enters the cold building of the small white church and Porthos waits outside on the church steps.   
The stone is cold, but Coquette settles besides her and keeps her legs warm. Porthos breathes in deeply, waits and enjoys the silent murmur of a town going to sleep. 

  
Samara and Porthos would come here every week as kids, even though their father had another faith.  
They could never sit still during mass and the older they got, the more they expressed their disagreement. The priest had been patient and had forgiven them as ought to be his job, but had murmured something about “a generation of women who don’t want to listen.”  
  
“I think he means every generation of women,” Samara had said and the memory reminds Porthos of how much she loves her sister.

Aramis comes out after an hour. The sky is truly dark now and there's a cloak of stars above them. She smells of candle-smoke and cold wet air, it makes Porthos think of a tomb. She doesn’t mention it, it helps Aramis, that is clear and that is all that matters.  
  
When they walk back Porthos asks, “what do you look for in there?”  
  
“Reconciliation,” Aramis says, pronouncing the word slowly as though she is almost afraid to get it wrong.  
  
-  
  
In the mornings when Samara and Porthos leave for work they often see something has been fixed in the garden, the potatoes have been planted, the hague has been cut. It’s payment of a debt Aramis doesn’t own them and they always make sure to leave plates of food on the table. High, so Coquette won’t try to eat it while their dark-haired friend sleeps.  
  
  
Aramis decides to stay for a little while longer and a little while becomes a month and months become years and winter never arrives. The heat never really ends and summer always endures. Samara swears a lot and sweats a lot and buys Ricard in bulk.

There is no such things as regular brown eyes and Porthos her own are the colour of the earth in the backyard on this side of the wall when the sun returns in the morning.

-

_There’s a woman asleep. She takes deep breaths along the rhythm of the field. There is no cloud to wake her up, and the sun has left her be.  
She understands too much and listens little. Her voice is weary, but her eyes are painted stars and she loves without conditions._  

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by Aramis' returning relationship with children in both s1 and s2 I wanted to write this vague character study set in some memories of my own childhood. (Only thing missing is an accordion to complete the picture of picturesqueness). And thus this was created.  
>  Also, there can never be enough fic focussed on Porthos <3  
> 
> 
>   
>  It can be considered a sister (or better said mirror since it's very different) piece to [reverence/condamnation](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2187711).  
>    
> 
> 
> thank you!


End file.
